What do “The Dark Knight” and “Space Chimps” have in common?
My kids won’t be seeing either.
I saw “The Dark Knight” last night. I’m not a big fan of superhero movies and this movie won’t change how I feel. I like dark, violent, foreboding films, but “Dark Knight” was a little too full of itself with the philosophical musings. (What is villianny? Are bad people heroes? Are good people villians? Why did this dude sit in the center of the aisle and get up, like, four times?)
One thing that can’t be argued is Heath Ledger’s performance. He was far and away the best thing in the movie. This man was an incredible talent. “Brokeback Mountain” is the best movie of the 00’s and his acting in that movie was monumental.
I just wish someone would acknowledge his inspiration for The Joker: Tom Waits. I’m sitting in the theater, watching The Joker doing his sardonic, growly, hipster, scat delivery and it dawns on me. Heath Ledger is doing Tom Waits the same way Johnny Depp did Keith Richards in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Anyone who loves Tom Waits and has seen him live or on TV must recognize this.
Compare Heath and Tom. You tell me.
It can’t be a coincidence that Ledger’s final movie is “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which also stars Tom Waits as the Devil. I can’t determine if filming overlapped with “Dark Knight,” but Ledger must be a Waits fan.
This is in no way a criticism. Ledger may have credited Waits, but we may never know. Ledger as “The Joker” will be remembered long after “The Dark Knight” is forgotton.
As for “Space Chimps,” that movie just looks stupid.

Two years ago, the Center for Religious Freedom spotlighted Saudi Arabian grade school textbooks, which were full of awful, hateful lessons about Jews, Christians and anyone who wasn’t an observant Muslim. The free world took notice and the Saudi ruling family said things will change.
It’s now 2008 and a new study by the Center shows nothing’s changed.
- First graders are still being taught that “every religion other than Islam is false,” and are being asked to “explain that when someone dies outside of Islam, hellfire is his fate.” That last one sounds a little like my Catholic catachism class, if you substitute the word “Islam” for “Jesus,” but at least it wasn’t being taught at my elementary school.
- Fifth graders learn that Jews conspire to “gain sole control over the world,” the Christian Crusades never ended, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are historical fact, and on Judgement Day “the rocks or the trees” will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.
- Eighth graders learn that Jews “are the people of the Sabbath, whose young people God turned into apes, and whose old people God turned into swine to punish them.”
There’s page after page of this revolting stuff in the Center’s report, which can found here. It’s no wonder the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists were Saudis. How the Saudi ruling family can allow a fundalmentalist sect that perverts the Muslim faith into one of hate and intolerance such influence is beyond me. Yet President Bush literally holds hands with Saudi rulers.
One day, when oil does not dictate the United State’s every move, the backward Saudi society will slowly fester and die out, consumed by its own hate.